How do we define ‘the contemporary’, can we collect it, and if so, how should we do it? A look at some of the issues from the perspective of the Word & Image Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London argues for the primacy of the object over the digital surrogate, and investigates the challenges -and opportunities - involved in collecting or representing ‘boundary crossing’ art and design practice. The arguments are illustrated by a selection of recent acquisitions, ranging from book arts, multiples and ‘maps’, to prints, drawings and wallpapers.

There has been a change in atmosphere in Scotland since the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. This article describes some aspects of the country’s cultural background and the route taken to get there, as well as current trends in the Scottish library world.

This article looks at the contributions that historical photograph collections can make to people’s lives, by examining the ideas that museums, archives and libraries explore and apply in the management of such collections. For instance, the theme of the photograph as an historical record of events will be used to examine the archivist’s approach; the photograph as a source of information for learning or enjoyment will introduce theories developed by the library community; and the value of the photograph as a physical object will form the basis for looking at how museums approach our vast and challenging photographic heritage.

The BAEP Group (Bibliotecas de arte de España y Portugal) has travelled a long way in the last ten years. It has undertaken numerous co-operative activities: conferences, training, publications, projects to produce union catalogues and organise exchanges between libraries, creation of a web site, and international collaboration. Despite these achievements the Group has not so far constituted itself formally and it now has to decide whether to continue as an independent society of art librarians or to attach itself to a more general library association.

My mother-in-law thought I had been arrested; my boss called me paranoid, but there were even more surprising aspects of the Dr Drewe case. This is the story of a con-man who fooled the art world with paintings executed in household emulsion, backed by cut-and-paste photocopies serving as provenance. It sounds incredible but it could happen to any library or archive.

The French national museum libraries service comprises 21 libraries specialising in the history of western art and archaeology. The central library, which is at the head of the network, was automated first and has completed its retrospective conversion. At first this library catalogued the material acquired for all the others; then a number of them were able in their turn to computerise and thus contribute directly to the union catalogue of the national museum libraries. This can now be consulted on the internet site of the Ministry of Culture.

Over the past thirty years, the artist’s book has inspired comment from critics of disparate disciplines from writers on art, bibliography and librarianship, all keen to bring the artist’s book under the writer’s explanatory gaze and assimilate it into critical discourse. As a cross-disciplinary field of activity, it is thus open to constant reconfiguration from the respective voices of the practitioner, the critic, the librarian and the bibliographer. The definitions and categorisations offered by these writers often belie their respective dispositions, their training and the expectations of the audiences for whom they write.

The Scottish Visual Arts Group is a relatively young co-operative of art librarians. However there is a significant history to the group, a substantial list of achievements and a whole new future just about to commence.

The National Trust’s many historic buildings range from country houses to vernacular architecture, industrial archaeology and literary shrines. More than 150 of these properties contain books, for the most part the historic collections of their original owners. Though, in common with other heritage bodies, the Trust has been rather slow to realise the importance of its books, these libraries together represent something equivalent to the rare books collection of a national library. They are an incomparable though extremely fragile resource for the history of private book ownership, besides containing many rare books, and others of great beauty and interest.

The Scottish Cultural Resources Network is a nationwide collaboration of institutions from many curatorial domains, which has built a massive and sustainable multimedia digital library including tens of thousands of resources for the study and appreciation of art. This paper traces the history and governance of SCRAN, with examples of how it manages the creation of digital content. It goes on to describe issues of intellectual property rights and organisational sustainability and discusses what future such a service may have. Finally, it introduces a number of SCRAN-based digital libraries, including Resources for Learning in Scotland, the AMICO Library™, and the British History Library, as well as portal services such as Netwide Search.

The Virtueller Katalog Kunstgeschichte (VKK) is a specialized search engine based on the technique of the perhaps better-known Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog. It is an initiative of the working group formerly known as AKB, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunstbibliotheken, comprising the German art libraries funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The VKK has functioned since September 1999. Currently, almost all AKB members, in other words the most important German art libraries, are among the target systems. Together, the target systems already offer far more than 1.6 million bibliographic records. The newest participant is the union catalogue of one of the most distinguished art historical networks, the IRIS Consortium in Florence. The VKK, which has just received a new, multilingual interface, is intended to become a gateway to the OPACs of the most important libraries and networks on an international level, and thus a central tool for specialized art historical research. This paper is also an invitation for potential new international partners.

In 1997, the Danish Folketing made a grant of 200 million Danish kroner, the DEF grant, to upgrade IT facilities in research libraries throughout the country and help create Denmark’s Electronic Research Library. Most of the money was assigned to the major research libraries, but funds were also made available to some medium-sized libraries, among which was the National Art and Design Library in the Danish Museum of Decorative Art in Copenhagen.

The University of St Andrews Library has extensive photographic collections, ranging from a fine collection of very early photography (stemming from St Andrews’ important position in the development of photography in Scotland), to modern documentary and topographical images. In order to increase access to these collections, and to assist in their preservation, the University is in the process of digitising the images, and providing them on-line, with a detailed searchable database index. In recent years, this programme has been undertaken in collaboration with the Universities of Dundee and Aberdeen, in the RSLP-funded Visual evidence project, which aims to provide a single point of access to all three collections. Much has been achieved in recent years using this type of temporary, project-oriented funding, but a period of consolidated, predictable funding is now needed in order to safeguard and further progress the advances made so far.

The Library & Archives at Kew hold one of the world’s greatest collections of botanical illustration, assembled over the last 200 years. A resource well-known to the natural history community, it contains much to interest art historians. Using this historically rich heritage our forward thinking includes acquisition of more contemporary items and the formulation of a digital strategy for 21st-century access and exploitation.

Illuminated manuscripts, beer bottle labels, photographs of street furniture, pieces of Regency wallpaper and early films of the Royal Sussex Regiment all appear on the Art and Design Books in Brighton web site. They are just some of the items held in library and archival collections in Brighton & Hove that are relevant to the study of art and design history. This paper describes the smallest and newest of the collaborative collection management projects of the UK’s Research Support Libraries Programme.

Find it in London is the first pilot project of its kind in London. Using ten partner institutions across the archive, library and museum domains, it tests the concept of searching in one single step across these sectors for relevant collections. The pilot database, though currently small, allows an information seeker to choose a subject and find out which archives, libraries and museums in the pilot have collections which may be of interest. The next step will be to seek further substantial funding to scale the project up across the full span of London’s information treasure troves and create a world-beating web-based lookup subject tool.